


third law

by scrhaiser



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4132998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrhaiser/pseuds/scrhaiser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. </p>
<p>Peggy dies; Angie reacts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	third law

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leslytherinphoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslytherinphoenix/gifts).



> Leo is the gal pal of all gal pals. Happy birthday.

 

"I'm so sorry," he says. He sets the brown filing box in the table. His hands are chapped; his eyes are rimmed in light red. "This is- she wanted you to have her things." Across the hall, someone breaks a cup against the ground and shrieks. Angie flinches; the worn man sitting across the table does not.

( _She wanted you to have her things._ ) Angie pulls the box close to her and sets it on her lap before she asks, "Did you kill her?" [did you betray her did you shoot her did you look into the eyes of my friend and pull the trigger anyway]

He pales; he stiffens; he slumps; he sighs. “No,” he whispers. “But we might as well have.” He looks wrecked, like a string has been yanked from his stomach and all his guts are slipping free.

They watch each other, rats caught in a trap with no cheese.

“The SSR,” she states.

“Yes.”

“And Peggy was an agent as well?”

He closes his eyes. “Yes,” he whispers, the affirmation fluttering on his lips.

“She deserved it more than you ever will,” Angie says as she stands, arms wrapped around the brown box. Her chair screeches against the door as she pushes it out of the way and flees up the stairs. No one stops her. She fumbles with her key and drops it, her hands shaking as she picks it up and smashes it at the lock. It takes several tries before she hits her target and can open the door. She pushes it closed behind her and slides to the ground, still clutching the brown box.

Only then does she allow herself to scream into her fist.

 

* * *

 

_I’ll explain everything._

__

Fat chance.

Angie scrubs harder at the table.

 

* * *

 

For three days, the brown box sits on her dresser and her window stays open. An invitation; a temptation; a reminder; a burn.

On the fourth day, she is locking the door behind her when she hears Ms. Fry’s clipped tones accompanied by an unfamiliar cadence. “Ah,” Ms. Fry says, “and this will be your neighbor, Ms. Martinelli. Ms. Martinelli, I’d like to introduce you to Ms. Johnson.” Her smile is crimped.

Angie stares, her hand still on her key; her key still in the lock. “Ms. Martinelli?” Fry prompts, her smile growing thin and the wrinkled skin around her eyes tightening.

She blinks, and hastily extends her hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” she says, even though it’s not, even though it’s the farthest thing from nice and the farthest thing from okay. She slaps a haphazard smile onto her face.

Ms. Johnson smiles back, quiet and soft like a mouse. “The pleasure is all mine,” she says, and all Angie can think is how utterly unlike Peggy she has how completely different how she will be moving into that apartment how she will be sleeping where Peggy slept how she will be filling a void that can’t be filled. This isn’t fair: the universe doesn’t get to smooth out a gap like this; it can’t fill a hole left by someone like Peggy Carter; it doesn’t get to insert some small young girl in the place of someone who is missed.

“I’m late for work,” she says quickly, before the void coming from Peggy’s apartment swallows her whole and holds her down and starves her of air and drowns her. She darts around them, toward the staircase.

“The last tenant left a hole in the wall,” she hears Fry saying behind her. She scrubs at her eyes with the heel of her hand until it feels like needles.

 

* * *

 

When she comes home that day, her feet dead to all sensation, she closes the window and buries the box at the bottom of her closet.

On the fifth day, Howard Stark appears on national television and is aquitted of all charges. The cameras follow him to his car, and he smiles and waves jovially before getting into his fancy black car, the door held open for him by a man in a nice suit.

Angie nearly stabs herself with her needle. “Excuse me,” she says, pushing her way up to her room.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She stares breathlessly at the contents of the box, digging through them trying to find something, anything, upending it on her bed in order to search more thoroughly. A pink hat, some paper weights, a collection of pens half-broken, notebooks half-filled with meaningless scribbles like a rough map of New York and a the word 'laundry', the tail of the 'y' trailing across the page.

She realizes: there is nothing.

She realizes: the SSR would have confiscated anything remotely important.

She realizes: Peggy is gone.

She realizes: there was never any hope there was never any light that man was just part of Peggy’s job (though their clandestine meetings do makes sense now) that seeing him on television means nothing.

She clenches her fists in her blanket and sobs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The funeral is on the sixth day. It is closed coffin, graveside service, family-only without the family.

The skies open up halfway through the prayers. Is is fitting, that the natural forces of this world understand this tragedy and weep as she does. Stark’s man, ash-faced, hands her an extra umbrella.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, she stops counting. The Johnson girl is smart as a whip, stealing bread like nobody’s business. Her work is still shit, bad tips and bad customers. She gets a small part in a small play, but it’s something nonetheless. Peggy’s stuff stays in a box at the bottom of her closet.

Angie moves on, because that’s what she has to do: one foot in front of the other.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It has been raining for the past couple hours, long rolling cries of thunder that push relentless sheets of rain onto the streets of New York. Angie stays in bed, curled around a book.

There is a sharp rap on her window. She ignores it: Fry has been complaining about the tree trimmers for the past two weeks.

It comes again: two sharp knocks in quick succession. She is out of bed and across the room before she knows it, flinging the curtains open and yanking the window up.

“Angie,” Peggy says, dressed like a soldier and soaked to the bone. It’s like seeing a ghost, but worse, because Angie had held on to hope for so, so long. “I’m so sorry about everything. I can explain I - can I come in?”

She steps aside, watches numbly as the woman she thought was dead steps into her room. “I hate you,” Angie says as her throats wells with tears, because this is something that must be known. A stray strand of hair dangles in front of Peggy’s face; Angie pushes it behind one ear. “I’m glad you aren’t dead. I wish you would have told me.”

“Me too,” Peggy says, biting on her lip. She trembles minutely, a contained earthquake. “Angie- I…” She shifts forwards, then shifts back. “I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry to do this to you now, but I-”

“Sit,” Angie commands, pulling out a chair. She herself sits down next to her. “When you-” She swallows. “I need you to know - when you were dead, I had one big regret.”

She says that, and then there is a silence between them. “I have a lot of regrets,” Peggy says quietly. “Too many.”

“I never told you,” she says, her voice cracking like glass, “You never knew-” Peggy silences her with her mouth, pressing her lip against hers. She tastes like fresh rain, smells like gunpowder, is everything Angie ever imagined but is also everything more. It is quick, over within a breath, but it is enough. Something rises in her chest, blooming like a flower, spreading warmth and sunlight. Angie moves forward again, and this time it is slower, softer, warm. It’s like coming home. This time when they move away from each other to breathe, her lips tingle, her every nerve set on fire and ready to explode like a grenade.

“Now,” Angie says, rubbing her thumb against Peggy’s collarbone, “now, you’re going to tell me everything.”

The corner of Peggy’s mouth quirks and a dangerous glint appears in her eyes. “Surely that can wait.”

“You’ve got ten minutes, English,” Angie says, and leans in.


End file.
